5 March 2013
UCR: Riverside and its sister city plan to strengthen ties through an educational opportunity with the newly opened UCR Tohoku University Center.
By Isabel De La Garza, Senior Writer
Sendai, the capital of the Miyagi Prefecture of Japan, has been the sister city of Riverside since 1957. When a 9.0 magnitude earthquake rocked the Tohoku region of Japan and triggered a tsunami in 2011, Sendai was devastated. Riverside, however, went to great lengths to help its sister city by organizing several donation drives and fundraisers. The two cities are still on very good terms as shown by the recent affiliation of one of Japan’s most prominent universities, Tohoku University, located in Sendai, and Riverside’s own University of California, Riverside.
On February 11, UCR and Riverside city officials and representatives of Tohoku University met to mark the creation of the new center, which is meant to act as a gateway for exchange students from Tohoku to study in America and UCR students to study in Japan. Currently, 44 exchange students are enrolled at the facility, which is technically not separate from UCR although it has its own staff and organizes its own educational and student-outreach programs.
Discussion of the expansion began several years ago but the actual project was only realized this year due to the 10 million dollar grant from the Japanese government for Tohoku to increase international study over the next five years. Tohoku has decided to send its students exclusively to UCR but this is still a major step. Although Japan has not had many large international study programs at its universities, in recent years it has taken steps towards adding more of such programs to benefit its students.
At the moment, the students are working on environmental projects, as well as alternative energy and engineering work. But as the number of exchange students increases, it is likely that they will be assigned more diverse projects. The students are coming in contact with a different culture, environment and way of life than they are used to, making for a learning experience for both the students and the instructors, and in the process helping to strengthen the bond of Riverside and Sendai, sister cities almost a world apart from each other.
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